The Wall Street Journal editorial page says the Congressional Budget office has jacked up its cost estimate of the Affordable Care Act by 8%. House Republicans say it's a staggering 54%. Who's right?
Neither, says Glenn Kessler:
[L]ate Wednesday, the CBO addressed this question in its Director’s Blog. It lined up the numbers for all three of its estimates and then made the following point, underlying it for emphasis:
“Over the eight-year period that is common to all three analyses (2012 through 2019), the latest estimate of the net cost of the coverage provisions ($794 billion) differs by only about 2 percent from the original estimate ($778 billion); the projected gross costs...differ by only about 4 percent over that period.”
In budget terms over such a long period of time, these differences amount to rounding errors.
As the CBO put it, again underlining its point: “The evolution of the estimates does not reflect any substantial change in the estimation of the overall effects of [the health care law] from what was projected in March 2010.”
The amount of sheer nonsense that's getting slung around here is remarkable. Right-wingers can't even agree on their made-up numbers.